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Giving Drug Advice Along With Music

The Electric Zoo festival, held this year in August on Randalls Island.Credit
Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images

When the TomorrowWorld festival opens outside Atlanta on Friday, concertgoers can expect to see safety measures that have become common at European electronic dance music festivals but have yet to catch on in the United States: a nonprofit drug education group will be giving advice, not only on the dangers of drug abuse, but also on how those who choose to take party drugs can use them more safely.

The music industry will be watching TomorrowWorld closely to see if organizers can avoid the kind of drug-related deaths that have marred several big dance-music festivals since March, most recently Electric Zoo in New York City. At least seven young people at these events have died of symptoms consistent with Ecstasy overdoses, and scores of others have been hospitalized, prompting promoters to cancel concerts and fueling worries among music executives that negative publicity could scare off investors and corporate sponsors, damaging a $4.5 billion industry.

Giving concertgoers tips on avoiding overdoses has been controversial in the United States, where zero tolerance for drugs has been standard policy among promoters. Such programs — from fliers describing guidelines for dosages of Ecstasy (MDMA, also known as Molly) to public service announcements from D.J.’s about taking breaks from dancing and not mixing the drug with alcohol — have also encountered resistance from some police and local officials, who say they can be seen as condoning the use of illegal drugs, drug policy experts said.

But Shawn Kent, the United States project manager for ID&T, the Belgian company producing TomorrowWorld, said promoters are facing a hard reality: even with zero tolerance, tight security, confiscation of drugs at entrances, undercover narcotics officers in the crowd and paramedics and ambulances on hand, promoters cannot stop all concertgoers from making bad decisions. “This is a societal issue,” he said. “The way to help people who have these issues is to give them information. At some point, it’s individual responsibility.”

TomorrowWorld’s decision hints at a broader debate in America: Is it best to urge abstention and take a hard line against drug users? Or is it better to accept drug use as an entrenched practice, treat addicts and teach others to imbibe intoxicants more safely?

Shortly after the deaths at Electric Zoo over Labor Day weekend, TomorrowWorld entered an agreement with DanceSafe, a charity with chapters around the country that distributes information about the safer use of drugs like Ecstasy. About 20 DanceSafe volunteers will attend the festival. Some will roam the crowd, distributing handbills about how to avoid overdoses, while others will staff an air-conditioned “cool-down” lounge, where they will offer counseling on drugs and alcohol to concertgoers taking a break from the heat. Digital signs throughout the festival will encourage people to be mindful of safety, with messages like “Do you know where your friends are?” and “We can talk about her,” a reference to Molly. TomorrowWorld will not only be the first major festival since the deaths at Electric Zoo, but it will also be the initial foray of a major European promoter into the American market. Organizers expect to draw 50,000 people a day to a horse farm in Chattahoochee Hills, just southwest of Atlanta, for three days of music. Performances will take place on eight stages, and the lineup features many of the genre’s biggest stars, including Tiësto, David Guetta and Armin van Buuren.

In addition to the festival’s strict no-drugs policy, Mr. Kent said that only people over 21 can enter. Security guards with dogs will search cars and pedestrians and confiscate any drugs they find, and about 30 security cameras will scan the crowd for dealers and impaired concertgoers.

Steve Pasierb, the president of the Partnership at Drugfree.org, called DanceSafe’s approach “a series of half measures” that play down the threat MDMA poses to body and brain. “It’s like saying smoke all you want, but just make sure they are menthols with filters,” he said. “We would like to see a whole lot more education about why it’s not safe to use at all, rather than a wink and a nod.”

But Missi Wooldridge, the president of the DanceSafe board, said providing festival participants with information about Ecstasy and other party drugs can save lives, just as promoting condom use can prevent the transmission of AIDS. Nightlife should be viewed as a public health issue, as it is in some European countries.

She added that Ecstasy users tend to be young, and that many are under the mistaken impression that the drug is harmless. Few know, she said, what constitutes a safe dose, or what happens when Ecstasy is mixed with alcohol and other drugs. “Right now, our drug policy is not shaped so we can openly talk about it, and whether or not we say drugs are bad and have criminal sanctions, they are still being used,” she said.

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Some promoters and D.J.’s agree. Pasquale Rotella, the founder of Insomniac Events, one of the largest electronic dance music companies in the United States, said he has tried to offer drug education at festivals but has had trouble winning support from the local authorities, who can deny permits. In 2009, Mr. Pasquale said he made a video featuring D.J.’s including A Trak, Kaskade and Steve Aoki, warning concertgoers not to “play around with Ecstasy,” but it was rejected by Los Angeles County officials for promoting drug use.

Mr. Aoki, a well-known Los Angeles D.J., said security at concerts can only do so much. “These kinds of things are out of everyone’s control,” he said. “If someone is going to do lots of drugs, they are doing it before the festival.”

Ms. Wooldridge said DanceSafe would not be testing drugs for purity at the festival, a service it provides elsewhere in an effort to build an online database of street drugs and their makeup.

Mr. Kent said such testing, like that done at some European events, would go too far toward encouraging drug use.

Programs like DanceSafe’s, known as harm reduction, have been running in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Austria for more than a decade, often with the support of the police and government health officials. It is difficult to determine if these programs reduce overdoses, as studies are scarce, but advocates argue that they cannot hurt.

Several of these organizations have banded together to pool the information they gather about illegal drugs in an annual report.

In Amsterdam, the police and health authorities have been working for more than a decade with Unity, a group that hands out drug information at raves, parties and festivals.

Vivian Schipper, a spokeswoman for Unity who oversees an affiliated drug-testing program, said the organization’s volunteers walk a fine line. They advise people up front that there is no safe dosage of Ecstasy, but then add that there is a rule of thumb for avoiding an overdose: you should not take more than 1.5 milligrams of MDMA for each kilogram of body weight. (That means that a 180-pound man should take no more than 123 milligrams in a day.)

Ms. Schipper said the counselors generally do not dwell on the gory details of an MDMA overdose: extremely high body temperatures that lead to organ failure and bleeding from the nose and mouth. “We don’t want to scare them without any reason,” she said. “If you want to have this generation get through without too much damage, it is better to give balanced information.”

Correction: September 27, 2013

An article on Thursday about plans to offer advice and counseling about drug abuse to concertgoers at the TomorrowWorld festival near Atlanta this weekend misstated the surname of the president of the board of DanceSafe, a charity that will have volunteers at the festival providing information. She is Missi Wooldridge, not Woolridge.

A version of this article appears in print on September 26, 2013, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Giving Drug Advice Along With Music. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe